Imagining America Mail Art Project
Mail art, or correspondence art, traditionally has been a way for individuals to create and send small-scale works of art through the postal service. A variety of media can be used in mail art, including: paper, postcards, found or recycled images and objects, stamps, paint, photographs, music, poetry, or anything else that can be put in an envelope and sent via post.
The 2023 Mail Art Project was inspired by the IA National Gathering theme, Radical Reckoning: Invoking the Elements for Collective Change.
Reckoning is the practice of taking full account. It requires digging down to the roots—to be radical. While radical reckoning may unearth uncomfortable truths, past harms, and the origins of ongoing injustices, it also reveals the foundations of enduring cultural heritage, creative ecological adaptation, and the sources of physical and spiritual sustenance.
Mail Art Archive
View submissions from previous years by following the links below:
The Imagining America consortium (IA) brings together scholars, artists, designers, humanists, and organizers to imagine, study, and enact a more just and liberatory ‘America’ and world. Working across institutional, disciplinary, and community divides, IA strengthens and promotes public scholarship, cultural organizing, and campus change that inspires collective imagination, knowledge-making, and civic action on pressing public issues.
By dreaming and building together in public, IA creates the conditions to shift culture and transform inequitable institutional and societal structures.